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Switching off your Windows PC whilst doing updates.

We recently had a customer whose machine had been switched off in the middle of installing Windows Updates…You know the screen you see fairly often that says “Please do not power off or unplug your machine..Installing updates….” Generally speaking you should obey this information…. but on this occasion the customer didnt and ended up with a huge problem. The machine would not boot into Windows the next time they tried to start it up…The system wanted to do a repair but couldnt complete it, so they rang for some advice..

After testing the machine and trying several fixes, we noted the hard drive had been corrupted and damaged beyond repair.

So what is happening to your machine when it is installing updates and why shouldn’t you unplug or power off? Installing updates is a necessary part of being a Windows user…Windows updates are basically bug fixes for the system which is constantly receiving new data by simply being in use on the internet or having new programs loaded onto them…

When new updates are installed, the system will download them from the microsoft servers, install them and then configure the new data into the registry so they will run properly…When you see the message, “please do not power off or unplug your machine….” the data is being “written” on to the hard drive….if you shut the machine down while this is happening, chances are the data will not be written properly and you can end up with incomplete files that are not able to be “read” properly… This is where you will encounter problems when trying to boot back into Windows…

For our customer, they were completely unlucky as they stated that they had done this before and were able to boot into the system fine…but not on this occasion… So the most likely explanation is that the system was writing a “critical update” and they were just extremely unlucky that they turned the machine off at this point in time…

It is a good idea to learn from another’s mistake and to never turn off the machine whilst it is updating..There are a couple of exceptions to this rule, one being if the machine is sitting there installing updates for hours and hours as there is an obvious problem with a particular update…

… 🙂

What do I do if I have spilt a drink on my laptop?

Spilling a drink can be a costly mistake as liquid can damage the hardware very quickly. Here are some basic steps that you can take in case of spillage..

Turn the laptop off. Act quickly…As soon as it happens, immediately remove the charger and the battery. If the liquid touches the circuits on the laptop, then it will cause it to short.

Unplug anything plugged into the laptop. This includes a mouse or internet dongle.

Turn it upside down immediately. Get a towel and lay it on a flat surface. Lay the keyboard face down onto the towel. Leave it there undisturbed for a few minutes to stop the liquid running onto the motherboard.

Clean the spilled liquid. Use a lint-free paper towel or cloth to clean thoroughly.

Check the keyboard. Some laptops have spill-resistant keyboards. You can pour out the liquid in the keyboard enclosure.

Get a hairdryer out. Turn the hairdryer onto a cool setting and holding the laptop upside down, dry as much of the liquid as possble.

When you are sure it is dry, you can put the battery back in and test it.

If it doesn’t power up, call us for our advice. We can have a look at it…but don’t leave it too long if there was a lot of liquid or it has left a sticky residue. Depending on the amount of liquid sometimes the machines wont ever work properly again, and will suffer ongoing issues, but you can also be lucky, so its definitely worth asking us our opinion.